Kyber Network (KNC)
Basics * Kyber Network Crystals / Kyber Protocol * Decentralized exchange * "Kyber has plans to enable P2P trading for different smart-contract blockchains in the future, it is currently limited to the Ethereum network and ERC tokens." * Kyber went live in February of 2018 * Provides rich payment APIs and a new contract wallets that allow anyone to seamlessly receive payments from any token. Users can also mitigate the risks of price fluctuations in the cryptocurrency world with derivative trading. * "Kyber Network can power anything from wallets to exchanges to NFT’s and de-fi apps." * From the Token Economy (7-2019): "On the surface, Kyber Network appears similar to Uniswap as both allow users to easily swap tokens. There are, however, some important differences. Kyber offers users liquidity through various reserve pools that are managed by both Kyber and other parties. The user gets the price from whatever pool that offers the best rate. There are requirements for starting a pool and they can be managed in different ways. While on Uniswap anyone and everyone can supply to the same pool and prices are set by a formula. Furthermore, Kyber is making it very easy for other dApps and apps to integrate Kyber into their products." * Moreover, the project recently (8-2019) implemented the ability for limit orders, spurring it’s monthly volume to the highest it’s ever been $59.4M Token * From Token Tuesdays (17-12-2019): "Kyber just announced Katalyst, their new token model which places a heavy emphasis on KNC staking for their DEX model. Users who stake KNC earn a portion of exchange fees along with having governance rights." How decentralized is it? * The following comes from a post (29-10-2019) by competitor Komodo (which is the creator of AtomicDEX), so should be read sceptically: "The Kyber Network website describes the project as an “on-chain liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity from a wide range of reserves, powering instant and secure token exchange in any decentralized application.” The Kyber protocol is a set of smart contracts that provide a decentralized method for performing on-chain token swaps. It doesn’t have order book functionality, so it is technically not an exchange (even if it’s possible to post limit orders). Rather, Kyber is a decentralized version of instant swap services like Shapeshift or Changelly. In Kyber’s terminology, a reserve is simply someone who provides liquidity. By implementing the Reserve interface, the Reserve (liquidity provider) can register to the protocol’s smart contracts and offer its liquidity for takers (traders who accept existing trade offers) to buy. For now, you need approval from Kyber team to become a Reserve, so it is not a permissionless system. In general, anything that is permissioned is not decentralized. If something is truly decentralized, then there is no authority to prevent people from using it. The details on how Reserves determine the prices and manage their inventory is not dictated in the protocol and is entirely up to the Reserves themselves, as long as the implementation complies with the Reserve Interface. This can potentially lead to non-competitive markets. Let’s understand Kyber with an example. Suppose you want DAI tokens in exchange for 1 Ether. First, the Kyber smart contract asks different reserves to get the best exchange price. Then, you’ll see the exchange rate and decide whether or not to go through with a swap. If you proceed, you will send 1 ETH to a Kyber smart contract. Once received, the reserve will do an on-chain exchange and your account will be credited with DAI. But for Token A—>Token B swaps (where neither Token A nor Token B is Ether), Kyber uses Ether as a proxy token internally (TokenA →Ether→TokenB)." KyberDAO * From their own blog (17-12-2019): "KyberDAO to decide on key parameters: We will develop and launch the KyberDAO, giving the community of KNC holders the power to decide how the fees for the network will be used, by voting on the ratio / percentage between burning, staking rewards and maker (reserve) incentives. In the future, the DAO will likely also be able to decide on listing tokens, reserve approvals, and network development grants. We expect key members of the DeFi ecosystem to actively participate in Kyber governance." * From Token Tuesdays (25-12-2019): "While Kyber has toyed around with DAO ideas in the past, the recent Katalyst upgrade solidified that a DAO will act as a core part of the ecosystem moving into 2020. Katalyst brings a new token which will not only allow KNC holders to earn network fees by staking KNC, but also participate in governance through the KyberDAO. The KyberDAO will give token holders the ability to decide on how the fees for the network (currently 0.25%) will be distributed between staking rewards, maker/reserve incentives, and the amount of KNC burned." Bridge Reserve Smart Contract Vulnerability * A write up of the bug that Sam Sun found in three of Kyber’s bridge reserves can be read here (8-2-2020). "..a Kyber reserve manager smart contract vulnerability discovered by samczsun a few months ago, that opened up the three Kyber-run DEX bridge reserves to a potential attack vector on the Oasis bridge reserve" which got fixed. Usage * From the Token Economy: "Kyber has been doing over $10 million in weekly volume about half of the weeks in the last few months, which is above Uniswap. In other words, Kyber is on track to bypass Uniswap soon." * Being used in-app by Argent * From this network update (14-12-2019): "November was the month we hit and surpassed $400 million total volume on Kyber, carried out the 500,000th trade on the network, and hit a daily all time high volume of $7.33 million. 6,387 unique addresses in November (up 12% over October) have swapped with Kyber. Note: integrations like Nuo and Fulcrum count as single addresses and therefore their users are not included in this unique address figure. 3,166 addresses trading multiple times throughout November (up 21%) $1,140 (or 7.0. ETH) average size per trade (up 36%)" * From Our Network #7 (6-2-2020): "DeFi dapps pulling in liquidity from Kyber have increased their volumes by 87% over the last two quarters. Dapps like Fulcrum and DeFi Saver have shown especially strong growth with 499% and 284% increases respectively over the last six months. 1inch.exchange is another strong performer with continuous month-on-month growth while Nuo has seen a dip since its peak in July. The number of new users (measured by the number of new addresses interacting with Kyber within that month) has been on a continuing growth trend since Kyber’s mainnet launch back in 2018. Within this time period a total of 52,393 addresses have carried out 633,946 trades worth 2,853,033 ETH (equivalent to $535M). Note: new address numbers above exclude users and addresses interacting directly through DeFi dapps like Fulcrum and Nuo. KyberSwap users come from a very diverse range of countries across the globe with users from more than 100 countries trading on KyberSwap in the last 90 days. 37% of users come from Europe, 35% from North America, 17% from Asia, 5% from Oceania, 3% from Africa, and 3% from South America. The US makes up the single largest country and accounts for just under a third of KyberSwap’s volume." Team, partnerships, etc. Team * Loi Luu; CEO and Co-Founder * Deniz Omer; Head of Ecosystem * include active developments from professors at the National University of Singapore * Anton Buenavista * Ming Ng; "collaborates closely" Partners * Partners with BitGo and REN to begin the WBTC initiative; (31-1-2019) * Has partnerships with Digi Global * Is part of the DAOstack ecosystem (still as of 20-1-2020) Investors * Part of the portfolio of 8 Decimal Capital Category:Companies/Organisations Category:Coins/Tokens Category:Exchange